HRM

Now most people know that exercise is an important part of living a healthy lifestyle, but I learned it takes more than just being active. What I’m going to outline below are the tools I used that allowed me to lose 50 lbs.

If you are looking for what workouts I did or what supplements I used, I will go over that in another post.

Quick overview of my workout history:

I never lifted consistently in my life

I played soccer in college and was exposed to many lifting techniques and equipment

Through playing sports over the years, I have a strong mental attitude and am competitive

WHO CAN USE THESE TOOLS?

Anybody can use these tools. They are either low-cost or free and you don’t need to be a professional bodybuilder to figure them out.

WHAT ARE THE TOOLS?

The tools I use are a heart rate monitor, a mobile app to track the calories burned, a scale and a food diary to track calories consumed.

WHEN DID YOU USE THESE TOOLS?

Every. Single. Day.

WHY DO I NEED THESE?

The main reason why it is important to use the tools below is to help you track how many calories you are burning compared to how many calories you are taking in. The best comparison I thought about during this process was to treat it like a checking account: you want to create a caloric deficit (burn more calories than you take in) in order to lose weight. If I burned more calories in a workout, then I knew I could “afford” to have that late afternoon snack at work.

Alright it’s time to get to specifics. Here are the tools and how I used them:

Here is a list of digital scales on Amazon. I have found that the more you spend on a scale, the better the accuracy. For example, I bought a scale for $50 from Homedic and it was not as accurate as I would have liked. An analog scale will be your best bet for a cheap solution.

I chose this food diary because the Digifit iCardio app syncs to myfitnesspal seamlessly. Whenever I finish a workout, I just hit upload and when I log into myfitnesspal, my calories burned are already there.

myfitnesspal Food Diary

If you would like specific steps on setting all of these up and how to sync your HRM with your phone, just leave a comment and I’ll be sure to put up “How-To” guides. Remember, I won’t know you want these guides unless you tell me!

I will also write quick follow-ups on each tool so you can get an idea of how I specifically used each one. I just wanted to get this first article out for the fast-acting group who want to get the equipment before I dig deeper into the actual workouts and supplements I used.